🥇 Best Waitlist Software for 2024
By Maya Kyler on December 3, 2023
We're coming up on the end of 2023.
As we look to 2024, there is a diverse landscape of waitlist software solutions, offering a range of tools for various business needs.
This article aims to compare and contrast different waitlisting solutions, highlighting their unique features and strengths.
We've made plenty of reference to our Waitlist Comparison Page, but we've gone beyond
that scope to also include more general queue management solutions.
GetWaitlist.com
Waitlist stands out in the pre-launch waitlist segment, especially for our viral referral marketing capability.
After three years in the market, we've collected almost ten million leads, and present the best free tier in the industry. Our main strengths are:
- Pre-launch Specialization: Tailored for businesses aiming to generate buzz before a product launch.
- Ease of Integration: Seamlessly integrates with various website builders and services.
- Cost-Effectiveness: Offers a comprehensive free tier and transparent pricing for paid plans.
- Customization and Branding: Provides extensive customization options for the waitlist widget and email campaigns.
Prefinery
Prefinery is a veteran in the field, known for its pre-launch and post-launch referral marketing services. While
it offers a suite of robust features, it tends to be more expensive, particularly for larger campaigns.
- Broad Feature Set: Includes a landing page, no-code widget, and branded links with referral codes.
- Expensive Pricing: Enterprise pricing tier is costly ($1,500+/mo) for large waitlists.
- Limited Free Tier: Offers only a 30-day trial, in contrast to GetWaitlist's extensive free services.
ConvertKit
ConvertKit is more of a general email marketing and newsletter service than a dedicated waitlisting solution.
It's a popular choice for content creators and entrepreneurs looking to monetize their audience.
- Comprehensive Marketing Tools: Designed for diverse email-based campaigns.
- Integration Flexibility: Connects with numerous apps and services.
- Costlier for Large Audiences: Pricing escalates rapidly with the number of contacts.
Viral Loops
Viral Loops is mostly a post-launch referral marketing platform, differing from our pre-launch focus. It offers
campaign tracking, templates, and a reward management system.
- Post-Launch Campaign Focus: Tailored for refer-a-friend style campaigns.
- Pricing: Can be expensive, particularly for large campaigns.
- Feature-Rich: Offers fraud detection, reward management, and various integrations.
Kickoff Labs
Kickoff Labs specializes in viral giveaways, reward-based campaigns, and leaderboard contests. It's versatile
but not specifically tailored for pre-launch waitlists.
- Diverse Campaign Types: Strong in sweepstakes and reward-oriented promotions.
- Advanced Features: Offers AI-driven giveaway builders and fraud protection.
- Pricey for Large Campaigns: Charges based on unique viewers of a form, which can escalate quickly.
Mailchimp
Mailchimp is a holistic digital marketing platform known primarily for email marketing. It offers a range of
tools but is not specifically focused on waitlisting or pre-launch campaigns. Mailchimp is useful standing on its own, but can also be integrated into many other
waitlisting solutions, such as GetWaitlist.com via our Zapier integration.
- Versatile Marketing Toolkit: Supports various campaign types and integrations.
- Audience Engagement Tools: Provides detailed analytics and personalization options.
- Pricing: Scales based on the number of contacts, potentially expensive for large customer bases, but provides a reasonable per-email price.
Other General Form and Queue Management Solutions
The following entries are not conventionally thought of as pre-launch, refer-a-friend-style waitlisting solutions,
but occasionally can be useful in this regard depending on your exact needs. Consider these the honorable mentions as we look
at the best pre-launch waitlist solutions going into 2024.
- Typeform is known for engaging, user-friendly forms and surveys. They support extensive customization and integrate with tools like Slack and Mailchimp. Typeform is a very general tool that serves diverse use cases, from marketing to HR. They're really not used for making pre-launch waitlists, but can be indirectly useful for collecting information from early users.
- Waitlist Plus is software for managing traditional queues or waiting lists, like lists of patients waiting for the dentist. These are not for marketing or drumming up pre-launch hype. It's old-school software for managing real-world appointments and schedules.
- Waitlistr is more targeted toward pre-launch waitlists and viral-loop-style marketing, but with a particular focus on giveaways. The downside with Waitlistr is that all their plans top out at low numbers of emails and customers. Waitlistr does allow you to collect payments from your signed-up members, so it can be used to run sweepstakes, but that can get difficult with legal compliance.
- Tally is general form management software, similar to Typeform. They have a neat free tier, where Tally offers unlimited free forms and submissions. You can customize your Tally Form with all the questions and conditional logic you may need. Similar to Typeform, Tally isn't really a full-service pre-launch waitlist signup collection service, but it can be useful to integrate with a Waitlist for collecting additional information from your early users.
- Google Forms is the classic general form collection software. It's highly flexible and integrates well with other Google services, including a way to transfer the user data straight to Google Sheets. The forms are not as beautiful as those of Tally or Typeform: you can customize only the basic colors, but you can add as many questions as you like. If you're just trying to run a survey and collect a bunch of information with no true need for waitlisting functionality, then Google Forms can be a good fit.
Conclusion
When it comes to waitlist software, there are many different options depending on what exactly you may need.
Our service as GetWaitlist.com is particular strong for pre-launch campaigns, due to our specialized focus, cost-effectiveness, and customization options.
Other platforms like Prefinery, ConvertKit, Viral Loops, Kickoff Labs, and Waitlistr have their strengths but are either more expensive,
less focused on pre-launch campaigns, or cater to a broader range of marketing needs. Even if we don't think they're the winner for pre-launch waitlist experiences,
they can still be great platforms in their own rights!
Finally, there's a broader suite of form management tools, like Typeform, Tally.so, and Google Forms
that can be useful to collect additional information from users. However, those form tools don't have the same emphasis on waitlisting,
and all the logic around queue management, referral marketing, and email marketing that it entails.
For businesses looking for a dedicated, all-in-one tool to build anticipation and engage users before a product launch, GetWaitlist.com offers a compelling solution.
Get started today.No credit card required.
We have the best free tier in the industry. Get started today and launch your waitlist in less than 5 minutes.
